bring a positive effect, also with regard to the release of the arrested, and that the reason for the arrest had not been explained made the people decide to go into the city, predominantly towards the barracks on Piotra Street and to the arrested men’s flats, to find out about the course of the events so far. Despite those efforts no conclusions could be drawn, as there was absolutely no contact with those arrested. For the time being nobody was allowed to visit them, no parcels were accepted, and no new information was obtained in their flats, as nobody knew the reasons or at least had any further information. Consequently, the remaining refugees began wondering what to do. Most decided not to return to their flats, especially for the night, and to spend it either at their friends’ or relatives’ who were permanent [6] residents of Lvov, their intention being to temporarily cover their tracks. During the next couple of nights the arrests continued but on a much larger scale. They proceeded as follows. Three or four persons would come to a flat: two policemen (known as militia functionaries, as in the USSR there is only the people’s militia, though it does not differ at all from ordinary police, the only difference being its name), an NKVD functionary, a member of the Communist Party (usually one of the Soviet newcomers), and a civilian (a clerk from the internal affairs commissariat). They had an arrest warrant issued for a given individual, whose identity they then checked without any explanation. The individual was then allowed to take some warm underwear (it was late June) and that was it. The men also took that opportunity to check the identity of other refugees present in the flat, and if a given refugee [7] proved that he was staying in Lvov with his family, that is, with his wife and children or parents, they let him be, but if he was staying alone, they took him away as well.
Arrested refugees detained on Piotra Street. Several days later permission was given to bring food and clothes parcels to the barracks on Piotra Street, which was done in the following way: refugees who had been specially selected from among the arrested stood by the gate and accepted the parcels, at the same time handing in notes for friends. According to those short letters, the discipline in the barracks was very strict, everybody was closely watched, and there were only single refugees, that is, those who had been staying in Lvov without their families. After only about a fortnight some of the arrested refugees who had managed to escape appeared in the city. [8] They provided more precise information. They said that those by the gate who accepted parcels for the arrested were group leaders, for everybody had been divided into
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